Sales, Inventory & Operations Planning (SIOP) Consulting Services
Align demand, supply, inventory, and finance into one process that consistently hits plan.
EMPOWERMENT
Turn Disconnected Plans into One Reliable Path to Revenue and Margin
In most middle-market industrials, sales forecasts, production schedules, inventory targets, and financial plans live in separate spreadsheets owned by separate teams. Demand shifts and supply cannot keep pace. Inventory piles up in the wrong places while service levels slip. The plan the board approved and the plan the plant is running quietly drift apart, and the gap surfaces as missed revenue and trapped working capital.
Sales, Inventory & Operations Planning (SIOP) closes that gap.
VDS designs and installs a governed monthly cadence that reconciles demand, supply, and inventory against your P&L, so leadership makes decisions from a single set of numbers. The result is sharper forecast accuracy, leaner working capital, and a planning process that protects enterprise value through the hold period and into a sale.
WHY VDS
Planning Your Team Owns Before We Step Back
Backed by decades of hands-on leadership experience and powered by proprietary frameworks like the VDS Business System® and 360° Client Alignment®, we align your planning teams around one set of numbers and turn that alignment into measurable EBITDA. You see the discipline take hold in weeks, and the value shows up in service levels, inventory, and margin.
Led by Operators Who Have Run S&OP
The people leading your engagement have run demand planning, master scheduling, plants, and P&Ls, with 15 to 30 years of leadership across manufacturing, supply chain, and industrial operations. The SIOP cadence they design fits how your business actually places orders, builds product, and reports results, so the process is realistic to run and realistic to fund.
Pinpoint Where Planning Breaks Down
Using the Manufacturing Diagnostic® and Value Driven Approach® frameworks, we find exactly where planning fails, whether in forecast quality, supply and capacity balancing, inventory policy, data integrity, or executive governance. Every fix targets a specific failure point, so effort goes where it moves service and cash the most.
Run the Cadence Inside Your Team
Through 360° Client Alignment®, we match planning and operations specialists who integrate into your team and drive the cadence from inside the business. They stay accountable to forecast accuracy, inventory, and plan attainment through the full engagement, and they transfer the capability so the discipline outlives the project.
THE VALUE DRIVEN APPROACH®
From Planning Baseline to Durable Results
We install SIOP through the Value Driven Approach®, our five-step commercial model that moves from baseline to measurable, sustained results.
Diagnostic®
Rapid, data-driven baseline captures your current planning state, from forecast accuracy and demand and supply balance to inventory health, data quality, systems, and the maturity of your existing planning meetings. That baseline locates the opportunity precisely and defines entitlement, the gap between how planning performs today and what a disciplined SIOP cadence can deliver in service, inventory, and margin.
Proposal
A customized plan sorts the work into Quick Wins, Rapid Improvements, and Breakthrough Strategies. Quick Wins might tighten demand review or reset inventory targets in weeks; Breakthrough Strategies redesign the full executive S&OP cadence and its link to the P&L. Each tier carries resourcing, timelines, and ROI projections, so a skeptical CFO sees cash and credibility building from the first cycle.
Roadmap
Prioritized implementation plan sequences the work with clear ownership and ROI milestones. Demand planning, supply and capacity planning, inventory policy, reconciliation, and executive governance are staged in the order that compounds value fastest. The roadmap stays aggressive but feasible, and your planning and operations leaders own it from day on
Talent
Execution is resourced through the 360° Client Alignment® network, from demand planners and schedulers to interim VPs of Supply Chain. These experts run the cadence side by side with your team at the point of impact, in the planning room and on the floor, and they coach as they go, so your people sustain the process long after the engagement closes.
Outcomes
Every result that leadership and investors track gets measured against the baseline, from forecast accuracy and on-time delivery to inventory turns, working capital, service levels, and EBITDA. Because each improvement traces to the plan, the value is provable, defensible in diligence, and portable to the next planning cycle and the next site.
BUILT TO SUSTAIN
Cadence That Sharpens Every Month
One-time process redesign fades the moment the pressure returns. Installed as a living monthly discipline with clear owners, a fixed cadence, and forward-looking metrics, SIOP keeps leadership planning ahead of the next demand shift. Over time, the cadence becomes how the business plans, adapts, and holds itself accountable, cycle after cycle.
Governed Monthly Cadence
Product review, demand review, supply review, reconciliation, and executive S&OP run on a fixed calendar with named owners and clear decision rights. That rhythm makes planning predictable and gives leadership a standing forum to resolve trade-offs before they become misses.
Forecast Accuracy That Compounds
Demand planning captures real signals from sales, customers, and history, then reviews and improves accuracy every cycle. Better forecasts flow straight into supply, inventory, and financial plans, reducing the volatility that drives expedites and excess.
Inventory Working for the Business
Inventory policy ties to service targets and demand variability, so stock is held where it earns its keep. Turns improve, working capital is freed, and service levels hold, giving a private equity owner a cleaner balance sheet and a stronger cash story.
One Reconciled View
Demand, supply, and finance plan from one reconciled view. Sales, operations, and the CFO align on the same volumes, revenue, and margin, so the executive S&OP meeting runs as a decision forum where the numbers are already agreed and the conversation moves straight to trade-offs.
Decisions Linked to the P&L
Every planning scenario is expressed in revenue, cost, and margin, so leadership sees the financial consequence of each choice before committing. Planning becomes a direct lever on enterprise value and EBITDA.
FAQ – Sales Inventory & Operations Planning
SIOP consulting designs and installs the cross-functional process that balances demand, supply, and inventory against your financial plan. Monthly cadence, owners and decision rights, and sharper forecasting and inventory policy all get built with your team, and the executive S&OP meeting runs until the process holds on its own and consistently drives plan attainment.
They describe the same discipline at different levels of maturity. S&OP is the classic sales and operations balancing process. SIOP makes inventory an explicit third pillar, which matters for asset-heavy manufacturers. Integrated Business Planning extends the cadence deeper into financial planning. VDS meets you at your current maturity and advances the process from there.
Procurement Consulting focuses on strategic sourcing, supplier strategy, and cost of purchased goods. SIOP focuses on the planning cadence that balances demand, supply, and inventory across the whole business. Both reinforce each other: better demand and supply plans give procurement cleaner signals, and each feeds the same EBITDA outcome. Many clients pair them.
Common triggers include chronic forecast misses, expediting and firefighting, inventory that is high overall yet short on the items customers want, planning meetings that turn into arguments over whose numbers are right, and a new private equity owner who needs predictable plan attainment. If sales, operations, and finance are planning from different numbers, it is time.
Clients typically see improved forecast accuracy, better on-time delivery, higher inventory turns, freed working capital, and greater confidence in hitting revenue and margin plans. Quick Wins can land within the first planning cycles, while full cadence maturity builds over a longer program. Every gain is measured against your baseline, so the value is provable.
Assessment runs through the Manufacturing Diagnostic® and Value Driven Approach®, evaluating forecast quality, supply and capacity balancing, inventory policy, data integrity, systems, and the maturity of your existing planning meetings. That diagnostic locates the few issues driving most of the disruption and defines a clear entitlement for what disciplined SIOP can deliver.
SIOP ties inventory targets to service levels and demand variability, so stock is positioned where it earns a return. Turns rise, cash tied up in excess and obsolete inventory is freed, and service holds. For a private equity owner, cleaner balance sheets and stronger cash conversion translate directly into enterprise value at exit.
trong SIOP runs on trusted data and clear signals, and the right analytics or planning system accelerates the cadence. Process and data discipline come first, and technology aligns to it through the Digital Transformation capability, so you invest in tools that accelerate a planning process that already works.
Yes, and that is the point of how the engagement is run. Embedded experts from the 360° Client Alignment® network run the cadence side by side with your planners and leaders and coach as they go. By the end of the engagement your team owns the meetings, the metrics, and the decisions, and the discipline is embedded in the VDS Business System®.
Portfolio value is one of the highest-return uses of SIOP. Governed planning delivers predictable plan attainment, leaner working capital, and a documented, repeatable process that holds up under a buyer's diligence. VDS deploys fast through the 360° Client Alignment® network, and every result is measured in EBITDA terms, aligned to your hold period and value-creation plan.
~18%
improvement in forecast accuracy once demand, supply, and inventory plan from a single reconciled set of numbers
22%
increase in inventory turns freeing working capital while holding service levels
93%
improvement in on-time delivery delivered through a governed monthly SIOP cadence
$2.1B
in EBITDA impact delivered through aligned Sales, Inventory & Operations Planning
INTEGRATED PLANNING EXCELLENCE
Proven Across Volatile Demand and Complex Supply Chains
VDS has installed planning discipline across the sectors where demand volatility, complex supply chains, and tight inventory economics make SIOP decisive, including aerospace and defense, food and beverage, industrial manufacturing, and consumer products.
START YOUR CADENCE
Ready to Make Every Plan a Plan You Can Hit?
Align demand, supply, inventory, and finance into one process built to deliver.
SIOP turns planning into a reliable engine for revenue, margin, and cash. VDS installs the process, runs it with your team, and transfers the capability, so the discipline strengthens every cycle and scales across every site.